“Greece 🇬🇷 ~On Tinos Island, Where This Was Unexpected!”

• June 18, 2020
• By Pen n Daryl
• 4 Comments

We took another trip around a small part of island, while we still had a rental car. This last adventure, would prove to be quite an unexpected surprise!
We have seen plenty of old villages and churches, so we just wanted to drive around, enjoy the beauty, and see where we ended up.

We drove up on top of the highest hill, east of Tinos Town, not far from our home base at the beach. We did walk through one old village and viewed its church. From there, we ended up back at a Monastery we were denied access to, prior. There were no people around this time, and while locked up, we started exploring the huge grounds that were open. We could NOT believe what we stumbled upon! WOW, check out the photos!

Now, an update about our future travel plans.

Tomorrow, we have to leave Tinos Island at 8:30PM, but we will travel by Ferry to another island, called Paros. Our intended next Island was to be Naxos Island, but that would have required waiting on Paros from 10:30PM till 2:30AM, for the next Ferry to Naxos. Ha! I’m telling you, we party like it’s 1999, but only till about 9PM, now! PLUS, the marble bench seating at the docks, I call “10 minute chairs,” only! In the end, it made more sense to go from Tinos to Paros on a Ferry for the 3.5 hours, and stay for a week. 

Also, super good news; as of yesterday, a package my daughter sent to me, from the USA 🇺🇸 back on the 10th of April, that was to arrive 6-10 days later (April 20th but got stuck “somewhere);” well, it actually arrived on Santorini Island, recently, two months later!  As a result of the late, but delivered parcel, we are now making a trip back to Santorini Island for two nights, (from Paros Island, on another Ferry for five hours). This will allow us to go to the post office in Fira to pick up my package of essential supplies.  I contacted the post office on Santorini, today, to ensure they will hold my package till the 24th of June….whew! They said they would.  I am relieved, because the return address will no longer be good, since my daughter and family are moving! I was told, by the post office staff, prior, when the box was so late, that they would return the package for free, since it took so long to arrive. NOOOO, that would be a drag! However, the rub is, customs is charging us 107 euros for the pleasure of receiving our much delayed package 🙄 But, what can we do? The supplies are worth around $500. By returning to Santorini, this will give us a chance to see our friends one more time, too! We would love to see our kitties friends, as well, but it will be too hard to say goodbye, twice. Our friend tells us the babies are big and can climb, now, so they are getting around, and the mama is good, too.

We will rent a car again, from the car rental place, who knows us quite well from our many months spent on Santorini. We will only have one full day to take care of some business. Aside from the post office pick up, we will go by the hospital and see if the biopsy report has returned, on my cyst removals we had done there. Daryl and I took each others stitches out for each other, and all is healing up, very well!

After two nights on Santorini, by June 25th, we will fly 50 minutes back to Athens, (no thanks on the other option of a 14 hour Ferry) for our long awaited final stay there. We will only stay two nights in Athens; just long enough to pick up our stored luggage we left at our arriving hotel, way back in March, when we had only planned to be in Greece a total of two weeks! I have also been in touch with the hotel manager in Athens, and he assures me our bag is fine an we can pick it up, when we get there! We will also need to arrange a bus, to get us out of Athens, and on to Albania. We PRAY the Albania borders remain open, till we can get in. With the transportation modes not operating at full throttle, we do not know what we are looking at, to get from Athens to Albania, but we can not remain in Greece any longer than the 9th of July. We do anticipate we can travel by a bus to the border of Albania, just not into Albania, (like what use to be available). We have no accommodations for the first two nights in Albania, so we will just hire a taxi to take us to the closest budget stay. What we would like to do (by the 27th of June), is to rent a car and drive ourselves to a stay along the Albania Rivera, where we will stay till July 13th. We have no idea how rental cars work in Albania, so this is to be determined.

We gave ourselves some wiggle room, to get out of Greece, by almost two weeks, because one thing is for certain; it requires for more effort and patience to “travel plan” now, versus, before the pandemic.WE would love to stay in Greece till July 9th, but we also need to get over the border to Albania, just incase their policies change on us, and the border closes, again.

Time will only tell, what the new normal will really look like, in the future of the travel industry, but for now, I have been arranging accommodations to include a kitchenette, and also to be near a market, so we can cook for ourselves. More and more restaurants are opening up all the time, BUT this is Europe and we do not like the European prices, which averages about $45 for the two of us, for dinner that is so-so, and nothing fancy. We have always saved a lot of money by not drinking alcohol, so that helps, but even water is expensive. Ha!
If not for the pandemic, we would normally be far, far away from Europe during this time of the year, because it is their high season. But “When in Rome” as they say, or in our case, “Greece,” we have truly been afforded a very unique opportunity, like none other, to remain in Greece and Island-Hop.

Well, that is the latest from #teamsaunders. We hope you are all doing well, wherever you are in the world!